The Belhar confession is a beautiful document. It brilliantly states the obligation that we each have in Christ to love our neighbor not as somebody different from us but as our self. We are called to treat others with respect due to each and every human being. It pleas with us to practice and pursue community. It says that we need diversity in order to do the work of God in this world. It further states that unity can only be established in freedom and not under constraint; that we are to reject any doctrine that weakens the ministry and experience of reconciliation in Christ.
It is these final two statements that force me to stop and ask the question: how do we reconcile to another in freedom if we make stipulations on who can be included in the reconciliation? Too often our concern becomes orthodoxy and ignores the faith of the other. As we argue over what true Presbyterians believe we fail to consider orthopraxy is more concerned with faith that with right belief. It is a faith in a transcendent God that defies definition that Christ desires for us. It is a faith larger than our own understanding. Christ was not a savior of exclusion, rejection, elitism or condemnation. Christ was a savior of acceptance, of inclusion, of compassion, of love for all others.
When in our human understanding we begin to draw lines in the sand and require people to choose which side they are on we are limiting our ability to trust in an others’ faith. We inadvertently interpret God’s message into one of elitism and exclusivity into a religion that controls instead of a faith that frees. By adding yet another document to an already well defined box we again make a statement that is not ours to make. It puts the “burden” as Tillich calls it on religion and its perpetual temptation to imagine itself above mere creature hood and award itself the place of finality deciding once and for all who is saved and who is doomed.
I for one will strive to live up to the lofty goals set in the Confession of Belhar, to allow it to mold my life into one of inclusion, compassion, acceptance and above all of forgiveness for all my brothers and sister in humanity, but I cannot under good conscience vote to allow it to put constraints upon another in an attempt to establish freedom and unity through it.